Renaissance beasts : of animals, humans, and other wonderful creatures /
edited by Erica Fudge.
- Urbana : University of Illinois Press, (c)2004.
- 1 online resource
Includes bibliographies and index.
Unpicking the seam : talking animals and reader pleasure in early modern satire / "Bitches and queens" : pets and perversion at the court of France's Henri III / Hairy on the inside : metamorphosis and civility in English werewolf texts / Saying nothing concerning the same : on dominion, purity, and meat in early modern England / "Why should a dog, a horse, a rat, have life, and thou no breath at all?" : Shakespeare's animations / Government by beagle : the impersonal rule of James VI and I / Reading, writing, and riding horses in early modern England : James Shirley's Hyde Park (1632) and Gervase Markham's Cavelarice (1607) / "Can ye not tell a man from a marmoset?" : apes and others on the early modern stage / Pliny's literate elephant and the idea of animal language in Renaissance thought / Reading vital signs : animals and the experimental philosophy / The menagerie and the labyrinthe : animals at Versailles, 1662-1792 / Kathryn Perry -- Juliana Schiesari -- S.J. Wiseman -- Erica Fudge -- Erica Sheen -- Alan Stewart -- Elspeth Graham -- James Knowles -- Brian Cummings -- Peter Harrison -- Matthew Senior.
Animals, as Levi-Strauss wrote, are good to think with. This collection addresses and reassesses the variety of ways in which animals were used and thought about in Renaissance culture, challenging contemporary as well as historical views of the boundaries and hierarchies humans presume the natural world to contain. Taking as its starting point the popularity of speaking animals in sixteenth-century literature and ending with the decline of the imperial Menagerie during the French Revolution, Renaissance Beasts uses the lens of human-animal relationships to view issues as diverse as human status and power, diet, civilization and political life, religion and anthropocentrism, entertainment, language, science, skepticism, and domestic and courtly cultures. Through analysis of texts by writers including Calvin, Montaigne, Sidney, Shakespeare, Descartes, Boyle, and Locke, Renaissance Beasts uncovers new and arresting interpretations of Renaissance culture and the broader social assumptions glimpsed through views on matters such as pet ownership and meat consumption.